A criminal's head is a manifold

Stupid is as stupid does. This is like a scene from A Clockwork Orange. It seems this Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha includes sacrificing animals in remembrance of God providing to Abraham a ram when Abe was ready to offer his son. (Funny, the article reads, “a ritual commemorating the biblical account of God's provision of a ram.” Do you think they reference it out of the Bible? Oh yeah, that’s that old book that is only partially true, at least according to them.) It further seems these folks are ok on the concept of animal sacrifice, but not the reality.

“In Turkey, at least 1,179 people - dubbed "amateur butchers" by the Turkish media - were treated at hospitals across the country, most suffering cuts to their hands and legs.

“Four people were severely injured when they were crushed under the weight of large animals that fell on top of them, it was reported. Another person was hurt when a crane, used to lift an animal, tumbled onto him.

“Three people suffered heart attacks and died while trying to restrain animals, private CNN-Turk television reported.

“Two bulls escaped and caused havoc in the streets of the central Turkish city of Kayseri and in the south-eastern province of Sanliurfa, until they were caught with the help of veterinarians who fired tranquilliser darts.”

Who’s the animals?

Some people give criminals a bad name. This idiot carjacks a GMC Envoy. Can’t just find a vehicle driven by some effeminate boy that works in a florist shop making arrangements all day. No. Our criminal jacks a vehicle with five people in it. OK. Maybe has some mojo percolating inside that southern mud flap. Even busted the driver’s window and dragged the driver out. And then started punching the passengers until they left. Dufus carjacker hit a couple of vehicles on his joyride, and then wound up in another town. Actually, so far so good. Not a bad roll. But then it fell apart.

Seems the oxycontin or crack or whatever he was on began to wear off. And then his loserness began to shine through.

The pussy called the cops. Said, "Um, I committed a crime," then "I stole a vehicle."

When the dispatcher asked for his name, King allegedy said, "I'd rather do this: Could you just send the police over here?" The dispatcher then asked where the stolen car was located, to which King replied, "I couldn't even tell you. I don't even know where I'm at." He then sat on the curb next to the SUV waiting for the cops to arrive.

These girls from the hood don’t know nothing. Amazing. Never ever end a sentence in a preposition.

Here’s some fun facts about shoplifting. Total annual cost of theft from retail stores: $33.21 billion. Inventory loss ranges from 0.7% to 2.2% of gross sales with the average falling around 1.7% (but that’s only one-third of the total inventory shrinkage – so it seems stockboys steal or trash twice as much as the thieves do). Shoplifting occurs 330 - 440 million times per year. And that ain’t counting grocery-store purse-snatching pussies.

Nothing short of wow. Dumb Fluckes parks in front of Wal-Mart amongst forty (40) marked police cruisers. Forty. Each car formally held two (2) cops. That would be eighty (80) cops in total. All in uniform, and milling about the store for some kind of charity event. Seems Mr. Dumb Fluckes did his shopping and then goes to the cashier. Mr. Dumb Fluckes presented a check for payment. A stolen check in the amount of $848.00 . Well, not exactly a stolen check. A copy of a stole check. And not a good copy. Busted.

"He has to be an idiot," Lt. David G. Marker said. Well put, officer.

Did you know that the Poincaré Conjecture has a complete solution? Here’s the conjecture as written in 1904: Consider a compact 3-dimensional manifold V without boundary. Is it possible that the fundamental group of V could be trivial, even though V is not homeomorphic to the 3-dimensional sphere? More modern formulation: Every simply connected compact 3-manifold (without boundary) is homeomorphic to a 3-sphere. We on the same page now? No? Try this: In three dimensions you cannot transform a donut shape into a sphere without ripping it, although any shape without a hole can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere.

This guy, Henri Poincaré, was working on the foundations of topology. It’s interesting stuff. Three-dimensional bodies, the manifolds and spheres discussed above – like the human body – have two-dimensional surfaces. Topology studies two-dimensional bodies. They call it rubber-sheet geometry. You can’t do rips or sews in the analysis.

In topography, there is no difference between a bagel and a coffee cup with a handle. Each has a single hole and can be manipulated to resemble the other without being torn or cut. Poincaré used the term “manifold” to describe such an abstract topological space. The simplest possible two-dimensional manifold is the surface of a soccer ball, which, to a topologist, is a sphere—even when it is stomped on, stretched, or crumpled. The proof that an object is a so-called two-sphere, since it can take on any number of shapes, is that it is “simply connected,” meaning that no holes puncture it. Unlike a soccer ball, a bagel is not a true sphere. If you tie a slipknot around a soccer ball, you can easily pull the slipknot closed by sliding it along the surface of the ball. But if you tie a slipknot around a bagel through the hole in its middle you cannot pull the slipknot closed without tearing the bagel.

Poincaré proposed that all closed, simply connected, three-dimensional manifolds—those which lack holes and are of finite extent—were spheres. The conjecture is important for scientists studying the largest known three-dimensional manifold: the universe.

Seems straight forward. The problem has been that all previous calcs has dead-ended in singularities – and that’s a pinch not appropriate in a sphere. So this Russian, Grisha Perelman, lays out a proof in three pieces (one, two, and three). He modified the Ricci Flow to get around this problem.

OK. Sorry. But I thought it was pretty cool to think of topography as rubber-sheet geometry. Here is a final link that works through Perelman’s stuff.

Enough. Happy New Year.

Saddam go bye-bye

Saddam Hussein, word was just released officially, will be executed in about two-and-a-half hours. He’s going to swing (with two wing men – his half-brother and the former chief justice of his court) sometime between 530AM and 600AM local time (Zulu + 3; 930PM to 1000PM here). The Sun will rise at 706AM. So he’s seen his last sunrise. The Moon has already set and will not rise until after he is room temperature. No satellites for you! It is 34 degrees and clear right now, and going up to a high of 48.

Interestingly, astronomical twilight is set to begin at 537AM – just about the time the pod bay door is set to open under his feet. “Astronomical twilight” is defined to begin in the morning, and to end in the evening when the center of the Sun is geometrically 18 degrees below the horizon. Before the beginning of astronomical twilight in the morning and after the end of astronomical twilight in the evening the Sun does not contribute to sky illumination.

So, the darkest time of the day will end with Saddam’s death. That’s kinda poetic.

I am Not an Animal – A Christmas Story (kinda sorta)

I live in a bubble. It is all I have ever known. I am a bubble snowboy. I have severe combined immunodeficiency disease, or SCID. I live inside this bubble all of the time. It isn’t as limiting an existence as some people might think. Let me show you some pics. This is me:



I’ve vacationed all over the world. I got lots of family. I have to watch puncture wounds, but that’s not as bad as it seems. I’ve got a pretty advanced filtering system because I need cold air pumped in a lot. I tend to get soft otherwise. So if I get punctured, the air goes through my filter and gets cleaned before it touches me. If it didn’t, I’d be toast – and that’s a bad thing for a snowboy to be.

Here’s me when I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with my friend Jim. It took us about six weeks to reach the summit. I felt bad for Jim when I got deflated on the way up. It was funny to me but he got scared when he started to inflate me. He used a hair dryer! (Jimmy doesn’t have much hair, but he says he is perpetually happy and needs to look his best, so he uses the hair dyer every day!) With the hot air, I got disfigured like the Elephant Man. I teasingly did my Wizard of Oz bit. Jim got all pale. I thought he was going to pass out! He switched to the right air blower and I inflated immediately. “Happy Birthday!” I said, which is what I always say when I am reconstituted. I really don’t know why. It’s something I learned from Frosty.



It must suck being him and having to go downhill on two legs. I just rolled. I was at the bottom three days before him. A couple of tubes of bicycle tire cement and I was good as new!

I was really happy when I got to the bottom and was fully inflated again. Uncle Smiley was there to meet me. His name isn’t really Smiley, but we call him that because he likes to drink a lot and is usually snookered! Notice the Rudolph Nasal Effect.



He’s a nice enough guy, but sometimes he causes us a lot of work. He’ll get snookered and will sleep in the wrong place. Next morning, Uncle Smiley is either melted or in chunks spread around several yards. We spend half the morning reconstructing him. It is nice to have him visit, but it’s nice to see him leave, too. Regardless, I’ll be honest – when I saw him at the bottom of the mountain, I was thrilled! After my session with bicycle cement, I was so dizzy from blowing and blowing to get myself inflated that I think I was snookered, too!

That night, Uncle Smiley took me out for dinner. There were lots of people there. Nobody looked funny at me, which was really cool. Everybody was watching the stage. These girls were humping a pole like a dog and changing into and out of their pajamas! I asked Uncle Smiley what they were doing and he was too busy thinking about something to answer me. I turned up my air conditioning to be safe: Smiley had a little puddle under him and that concerned me.

After a little while, some guy came up to and asked if I wanted to earn some money. “Sure!,” I said. “Want me to clean your sidewalks? Show you how I can ice skate?” “Something like that,” he said.

Next thing I knew, I was up on stage! Music was playing and everybody was clapping and watching me closely! I had a new friend, too. Her name was Lil Pea. She was a great ice skater! She told me everything to do. It’s the small things that matter, and I didn’t know that. You should have heard the crowd go wild when she would lick my candy cane! I didn’t mind; she said she would buy me a new one.



It was so much fun being on stage! Poor Uncle Smiley was p-r-e-t-t-y soft by the time I saw him again! He borrowed some of my AC to get hard, and then him and Lil Pea went for a walk in the alley behind the club. It must have been a warm night because when he came back he was soft again!

The next day Uncle Smiley had a surprise for me! We went to see a baseball game. It was awesome!



A-Rod made another error at third base, but he’s trying really hard to do good. He struck out three times, and the fans were shouting things like, “join the WNBA!” and “you probably can’t get to first base with your cranky wife, either!”

After the game, we took the short drive to Atlantic City, where it was party time! I hit the slots and made some money!!!



Little did I know it would be one of my last happy days for a long, long time.

The next day I hit the town – or should I say, the beaches! WAHOO!!!!!!!




After a tough day on the surf, I headed to a bar to relax and replenish. Then it all got bad. I didn’t know it at first; had no idea that it was all going to get so bad. I just stepped out with a few friends that said they had a “cranking good time” planned for me.

Here’s my new friends, and me with the new pipe they gave me:





(Oh yeah, the perp shots are from the Multnomah County (Oregon) Sheriff’s Office.)

Well, maybe I should’ve known I wasn’t in good company. But when we got to talking about buying more meth, and they got to telling me they wish they could make their own … then I had a great idea!

That is me in my very own meth lab!



I started cranking out the meth by the pant loads! I could make meth for a long time without breaks because of my air filtration system. Still, sometimes I needed a break. It was getting increasingly hard to get Alleve in big quantities since they started to stock them behind the pharm’s counter. Boo hoo!

On some of my downtime, I would stroll through the park. After I became a familiar face, I started to make friends. I asked Jimmy, here, tell me how many bottles of wine he had drunk that morning. “One or two,” he said. Then he analyzed the differences between screw tops and corks. Jimmy liked to talk.



I was doing so well with my lab, I didn’t want to sleep too far away (I was usually so wired I didn’t want to sleep at all!). I can’t sleep inside – you ever smell one of those places? Cat urine big time! My filters were getting clogged. So I camped out back and was real comfy!



After living in the alley for several weeks, I think I made a mistake. Who’da thunk that the feds would care about somebody holding a homeless vigil? Well, they did! Then went looking for the cat because of the smell and couldn’t find one and, well, my lab door was open. Ut oh!



My new home was a little warmer than my old one, but not as comfy.



Because of my SCID, I got special cellies. They were meth-heads, too.



The snow guy was cool, and had the same bad teeth most of us crankers get after a while. The dwarf scared me; too happy.

Prison life was ok. The bad part was detoxing. I had nasty dreams. In one I thought I was standing outside my bubble. No, the bubble was inside me. And people were inside me. One of them was me. But I was also outside of me. And my arms were sticks. It was very confusing and even more frightening!



In another dream, I saw monsters standing outside me!



After a few months, I was feeling ok. Boy, I sure missed my meth pipe! But anyway, I went to trial on a whole bunch of charges! I got hit with Conspiracy to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine (21 U.S.C. 846), Possessing equipment and chemicals for methamphetamine manufacturing (21 U.S.C. 843 (a) 6)), Possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute (21 U.S.C. 843), Maintaining a drug house (21 U.S.C. 856 (a) (1)). Whew, that’s a mouthful!

I testified and really enjoyed talking about how I did my work. They don’t let pictures to be taken, so here’s an artist rendering.



I thought the jury really liked me. They were laughing and really yucking it up while I testified. I was kinda depressed when the judge came back and said I was going to do 240 months in a federal penitentiary. Boy, that seemed excessive!

My new cell is a lot nicer than the other one.



I made a new friend, too. He never goes anywhere without his egg. I don’t ask. We all do whatever we need to get by, know what I mean?



The screws tell me it’s time for a cell inspection. See you in 20 years! Oh, and Merry Christmas!

only these

these are the only hands i love.

Where's GI Jane when you need her?

You wanna know why the Catholic Church is in such trouble with pedophile charges? Tain’t nothing to do with forced celibacy. It’s all to do with failing to cull the herd.

In every situation of life, problems arise. People act wrongly. As the leader, you guide and direct, divide and protect, so that your people acting wrongly are refocused and your victims are not further harmed. Not so the Catholics. This story just broke earlier this month.

The Diocese of Scranton has been sitting on a case since 1999. Seems that the Rev. Albert Liberatore was doing the touchy-feely thing with an altar boy. Repugnant – yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s only the surface of the problem.

Three employees of the parish went to Monsignor John Bendik (you can’t make this stuff up, Ben Dick, or said quickly, Bend Dick; just pathetic) – anyway – the three employees tell the guy they think Liberatore (sounds like the brand name for a sex toy) is crossing the line. As evidence, they presented a pornographic GI Joe doll (GI Joe with an erection – the things you learn in Catechism, eh? Do they teach Sex Ed in Catholic Schools? Now, boys and girls, who wants to guess what this bulge is inside Joseph’s pants?) and pictures of men in “briefs” which the Man of the Cloth kept in his pajamas.

What was Bend Dick’s response? He said that he agreed that the items “represented a troubling pattern.” That’s a masterful understatement. But let’s see his actions before we judge.

He goes to Sex Toy Boy and asks if something was going on. “No,” comes the reply. “Good enough for me,” says Bendy.

Monsignor Dick never spoke with the child. Sex Toy Boy had been doing him for a year or two – and continued for another couple of years.

There will be no shortage of folks to conduct mass in Hell. Hey, Dick, will it still be in Latin?

Speaking of diving and eating where you shouldn’t, it seems dumpster diving is now socially acceptable, at least in Berkeley. Long a Bastion of the Beautiful People, Berkeley frequently makes headlines with noble causes concerning environmental and anti-war issues. Impeaching republicans, running raids on chicken farms, and receiving cold yogurt enemas are standard fare. So why not reduce solid waste by eating it? Seems consistent. Just stay away from the yogurt.

Speaking of leaving things where they should be, this article gets the exodus from California all wrong. The suggestion is that prices – home and otherwise – is the culprit. No. Wrong. I moved for one primary reason: the people. Violence is an issue in Oakland and San Jose, but it is as well in any well-developed urban area. It was the extreme liberalism of SF and Berkeley that made the decision. A program to give the homeless shopping carts solves nothing. The City became a place where you avoided certain streets and sections, and where you looked forward to see what was ahead. No, not like NYC, not at all. SF encouraged drifters and the homeless, junkies and the psychotic. “Come here! Our people will not condemn you!” Sorry, folks, but enabling dysfunction instead of trying to solve it leads to problems. I didn’t so much mind the gay float in every parade downtown – approve or not you had to admire their dresses (I could never walk that well in heels). But the large homeless man urinating on the sidewalk in the theatre district did disturb me. People are so reluctant to condemn anything but a republican that they live truly compromised lives. Some folks just are not willing to accept it.

Enough preaching.

Air Amerika und radio teilen

This is a most interesting article – but not for the droning, skull-numbing topic. I could not care less about why or even if Air Amerika Radio is going to survive bankruptcy. There is, however, a line towards the bottom of the article worth investigating: ABC Radio informed its stations that they were to black out all ads from almost 90 companies that had bought time from ABC but did “not wish to air on any Air America affiliates.” The list of companies include Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, McDonald's, Cingular, Visa, Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, the U.S. Postal Service and the Navy.

Why won’t they buy time on Air Amerika? Hewlett-Packard issued a statement explaining that its decision to avoid Air Amerika was based on its desire to steer clear of “inappropriate or controversial programming environments.”

The article gives an insight into why normal companies don’t want to buy time there: “With an almost imperceptible audience, according to the Arbitron ratings, WWRC [the WDC station] …” and “Air America's afternoon host, Randi Rhodes, has been relegated to evenings on WWRC, in good part because Hess believes her show is unrelentingly harsh and bitter. ‘She's got unbridled passion, which is good,’ he says, ‘but my ears are going to bleed after 15 minutes. Man, how about a laugh now and then?’”

Imperceptible ratings and “harsh and bitter” hosts – no wonder advertisers are seeking higher ground for their ad money.

The memo from ABC Radio is below. The image can be enlarged by clicking on it.



Poor Air Amerika. Bu-bye! We barely knew you, and listened even less.

I always give equal time. At least sometimes. Well, rarely if ever actually. But this time I will only because I found something humorous within their logic. Seems that there is a website devoted to those in left field: Liberal Talk Radio. They be ascreamin’ cuz that bastion of lberaldom, Madison, Wisconsin, is dumping its liberal radio station is favor of – God forbid! – Fox Sports Radio.

"When I heard about this, I thought it was a radio stunt," Schultz, known as "Big Ed," said in a phone interview from his office in Fargo, N.D. No, Big Ed, you be going the way of white noise. Speaking of white, did you know that Madison is 84% white? That’s quite a jump from the 75% national average. Seems they have less than a third of the national proportion of Hispanics and less than half of that stat of blacks. Chalk one up for integration!

"Our job is to get ratings," Big Ed said. "Not only our show, but other shows did what was expected of us. It was poor sales management and poor market management, in my opinion. It makes no business sense, and it makes no operational sense either.” It was them, those evil, slimy management types! Yes, sir, Big Ed. Fox Sports has demonstrated numbers nationwide. Those numbers probably outpace yours. Sorry, son.

Schultz says ratings in the Madison market for his show and others were solid; the station posted a 3.7 percent of the overall market share in the summer Arbitron rankings, good for 11th place.

11th place out of 20 stations serving the area. That’s like a losing record, ain’t it?

This last article has a great comment: "I find it puzzling as to the timing given the election results," said Terry Kelly, one of the founding members of the Air America network and a longtime Madison businessman. "There is no business reason that is apparent to me (for the change), therefore, one wonders what the real reasons may be."

One wonders, doesn’t one? Let me tell you what is “puzzling.” I find it puzzling that Mr. Kelly thinks that corporate America responds to anything based upon purely partisan politics and also within 72 hours of an event for which we all know will have little impact. Changing control of the Congress is not that big of a deal, putz. Offices change, the arguments continue.

More? OK! "To me, it's dumbing down the market," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, whose Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation had a Sunday morning talk show in the Madison market. "It's not at all meeting local expectations. Of all the markets in the country, Air America ought to have a Madison affiliate."

“Freedom from religion” with a Sunday morning radio show? Ironic. But the wisdom lies in her final words: if the marketplace demands an Air Amerika affiliate, it will present one. Where’s your checkbook, darling?

Alright already! Enough picking on libs. I know! But it is so fun to listen to the .22 bullet bouncing around inside their empty heads. OKokokokok! Let’s try to learn something here.

What is a radio share, anyway? Those buffoons got a little over 3% of the market in Mad. Does that mean 3% of 400,000 (the regional pop), 12,000 listeners? Au contraire, mein dummkopf! (Two languages in one sentence! It’s like I’m smart like a liberal! Wowee! Let’s see. I gotta try this newfound intelligence out. “Impeach Bush (PBUH)! Tax cuts only make the rich richer! You waited on Katrina aid because the victims were black! Killing people to stop people from killing people is … um … wait … brain freeze … HEY! WAIT! That’s logical! It’s the same reason you neuter cats! Oh, {spit!}, what’s that nasty taste in my mouth?!?)

OK, back to radio share. This article lays out the calculations so that even I, a conservative, can understand it.

You should read the differing measurements (average audience, reach (or cumulative audience), share, duration, impressions, frequency (average and distribution), and loyalty), but here is the focus for us: “Audience share is a different kind of measure altogether. Both average audience and reach are counts of people. Audience share, though always expressed as a percentage, is not a percentage of people, but of person-hours. It's easy to forget this, but try not to! Take the statement "FM99 has a 40% share of the radio audience in this area." That means: out of every 100 hours that people in the area spend listening to radio, FM99 has 40 of those hours. That does not mean it has a reach of 40%. The reach could be a lot more or (more likely) a lot less, depending on the number of stations in the area, and how long people spend listening to each station.

“Think of it like this: if you add together the shares for all stations in an area, the total is always 100%. That's why it's called audience share. It can be calculated for a single quarter-hour, a time zone, a day, a week, or any time period. No matter how few people are listening to radio at a given time (e.g. 4 a.m, when audiences are usually tiny), the share for all stations will always add to 100%.”

So, what do we distill from these tidbits? With a 3% share, for every one hour folks are tuned to Lib Radio in Lib-Central Mad, there are 32 hours being heard elsewhere. The actual number of folks listening isn't given that I could find, but since not everyone listens to radio (start with a 94% reach and work downward), the people actually hearing you all in Mad is waaaaay down the food chain to just a couple of thousand folks. It must suck to be you.

Lib Radio reminds me of Pauline Kael's quote in 1972. Expressing her disbelief that he had just won re-election in a landslide (49 states), she said, "I don't know anyone who voted for Nixon." In similar fashion, but for inopposite reasons, I don't know anyone that listens to Lib Radio. Apparently not many people in Mad do either.

OK, enough learning.

Stupid in the Crib

Just saw a commercial for “My Lil Reminder.” Each recorder is $9.99 plus shipping and handling that I didn’t catch. But wait! A second one for free! They show somebody’s mother wandering around a parking lot looking for her car; take two: she exists her car and dictates the location! Later she replays it! She stops wandering! The rest of the bits were reminders to pick up kids, groceries lists, directions while driving, and maybe something else. Seems very useful!

I wondered how long the tape ran. The briefest of research got me to Mom Gadget. A good mixture of positive and negative comments. First, I found the s&h to be $6.99, total cost for the original deal is $16.98. Then the tape length – 20 seconds. Then the message issue – you can record only one message; the next recording overwrites. Then the clincher – what extra length? Go from 20 to 40 seconds. Cost is $9.99 per recorder (remember you are getting two), and add an additional $6.99 for s&h. Total revised cost: $43.95. Another site – I lost interest in tracking back to it – had a guy saying he wanted to return it but couldn’t find a way to contact them, including the number on the ban entry for the credit card which he called and always got a busy signal.

Good thing all the matriarchal figures in my blood lines are dead, else they’d be wandering parking lots.

Speaking of liars, how about a Shocking Lie Detector? It’s an Aussie product and something must be lost in the translation: the site reads, “Sorry – this item is SOLD.” Hmmm. Total cost is about $40.00.

It works just like a lie detector – baseline questions to calibrate, and then the interrogator takes over. Some interesting quotes: Make “sure you make contact with all the sensors, and strap yourself in”; “If you answer the truth to your interrogator's questions, you'll be fine. Lie, and you'll be punished with an electric shock”; and “Please note: The Electric Shock Lie Detector is not suitable for epilepsy sufferers or pacemaker wearers.”

It provokes seizures and interrupts internal electrical regulation? I gotta get one of these! If it brings a risk of death if used as designed, imagine the fun with increased juice! I wonder if my boy can jerryrig the power source over to a car battery. “Hey, Grammaw! You sure you can’t find your car? Take a seat. Let’s see if you really can’t find your car or are instead trolling the parking lot. That your real hair? Better take that off, darling, you know how synthetics tend to melt.”

Don’t get bummed if this item is sold out, they have a whole line of shocking toys. Amazing.

Speaking of screechy singers, Barbra Streisand’s husband is pushing this website that claims that September 11 was a planned demolition. This is just too stupid. I can’t even make fun of it.

Speaking of intellectual vacuums, here is a list of all the secret tunnels that lead to the Underground Alien Bases. Wanna say “Merry Christmas” to an alien? Go here: There is an entrance to the tunnels in New York City in the vicinity of Midtown Manhattan that can be reached through an abandoned elevator shaft that only very few know about.

Can’t get there from here? Midtown abandoned shaft not specific enough? Try this: There are tunnels beneath Mt. Shasta that lead to a UFO base there, as well as tunnels that connect with the vast world-wide tunnel network. The Lemurian city "Telos" is said to exist beneath Mt. Shasta. William Hamilton has done much research on Mt. Shasta and the tunnels. He has privately published a book entitled "Alien Magic" 249 North Brand Boulevard, Suite 651 Glendale, CA 91203.

This is fun! I can feel my brains liquefying and sloshing around inside my skull. One more: After one of the Iron Mines in Newfoundland Province had been dug deeper than any other, strange happenings caused the mine to be shut down. The mining town in which this mine is located is near the Newfoundland-Quebec Border. This mine, having been condemned, is off-limits, and the police DO enforce this. Sneaking in late at night seems to be the only way to gain entrance.

What’dya give an alien for Christmas? They are living underground, so a flashlight? Isn’t it cold there? How about a sweater? How many arms they got? This is so complicated. Maybe I’ll get them a deck of cards and Hoyle. Can they read English? Great – just what we need – more undocumented aliens who can’t speak or read English.

If by chance you get lucky and capture one, on the bottom of this link is a recipe for Alien Lasagna. All you need is one pound of lean ground alien, so you probably don’t have to worry about size. Be sure to bring a baseball bat and burlap sack with you. I think you could safely substitute your alien in your Gator Gumbo or Cooter Soup.

Speaking of cooters, it’s time to make your plans for the Spring 2007 Cooter Fest. For the race: If’n you gots a cooder 6” or under, you be a mini-cooter; tain’t no greasing or drugging your cooder; you can’t rub your cooter, but you can coax it. Sounds like rule for safe cootering.

Speaking of natural selection, who said smoking doesn’t kill? This gumhead goes to light her cigarette, and mistakes a pistol for a lighter. Bang, eh? She didn’t die, yet. But these types never live long lives. She’ll walk into an open manhole or a Code 10-74 (armed robbery in progress). Save the specs – Olivia Hutcherson, 21, of Anderson, S.C. – and google for her obit in a couple of years. It’ll probably be messy.

Speaking of messy, this has gotta suck: This dude gets in a Jacuzzi with this girlfriend and it sucks him to the bottom drain, not letting go even though four guys try to get him out. Dead. Stay out of Jacuzzis, Olivia. Fair warning.

OK. Done.

Muslims rape crickets and get cancer. Film in two million years.

So I’m supposed to think that Muslims are some kind of socially advanced group. We read that they are peace loving. Respect is the cornerstone of their beliefs. Give me a break. I’m not even the tiniest bit sorry to write that such garbage offered by the weak-kneed press is laughable.

What brings this to mind? This quote explains everything: “President Pervez Musharraf has opened a new and especially bitter confrontation with radical Islam by trying to rewrite Pakistan's controversial rape laws. These place an almost impossible burden of proof on women by compelling them to produce four "pious" male witnesses to prove rape or risk being convicted of adultery and face 100 lashes or death by stoning. This law, known as the Hudood Ordinance, has been regarded as untouchable since its passage 27 years ago. It also sets no minimum age for sex with girls, saying only that they should have reached puberty. A powerful militant Muslim lobby regards this code as sacred and based on Koranic texts and sharia law.”

Overheard on a Muslim street corner: “Hey, Akmed, wanna go get some poontang? Go get your two cousins. With just four or us, no rape can be proven – need four witnesses, remember? Who ya wanna do, my Muslim brother? Hey, who cares about age? As long as it’s got hair on it, eh? You know what they’ll be saying? Who doed my daughter? Ha! Hudood – Who doed. It’s a funny! Get it? Who da dude dat doed my daughter? I crack myself up! Ugg, I got sand in the crack of my ass again. I hate living in the desert.”

Oh my, am I suggesting that all Muslim men are rapists? Golly gee, no! That would be insensitive of me! But let’s see … y’all think we are fanatical, violent, and arrogant. Who you calling arrogant? You talking to me? I oughta kick your ass. Wait, I need to pray towards WDC to the Great W (PBUH). Be right back.

OK. Let’s make a deal. You change your laws to something within, say, fifty or seventy-five years of ours, and then we’ll talk. Start with this: women can vote; women can choose their sex partners; women can pick their own clothes; and (Muhammad shutter!) men who commit rape get 20 years in prison. BTW, I thought the cartoon with that Muhammad guy with a bomb in his ‘do (second image down) was pretty funny – and more accurate than humorous. Tick, tick, tick!

I’m not done yet. What brutality prompts discussion of changing the law? Seems Muslim men accept the dictate of the law requiring four witnesses – if you ain’t got four witnesses, then rape must be a socially acceptable punishment. So a nurse would not perform illegal abortions, and she was raped as punishment. You people are barbarians. Start policing your own then condemn us. OK. Now I am done.

I think I found exactly the past-time for me – Fantasy Cricket. I know absolutely nothing about the sport, as evidenced here. I still think that sports writing that includes lines like the “in-form England batsman was given out” is just plain weird. But I’ll give it a try and see if I learn anything in the process. Oh. Just tried to register. Closed for the season. I will toss it into my favorites and try to remember. I guess I could try Fantasy Football (Soccer), but isn’t the whole concept point scoring? I thought those games went on for six hours, and wound up one-nil.

You know, as a general statement, I like the Brits, but their sports really suck.

I found an interesting article on eating bacon and bladder cancer, complete with an apologist. Five bacon sandwiches a week has been linked to a 59% increase in bladder cancer.

The apologist? From the article: Dr. Carol Cooper said: “If you look at anything closely enough, eating tons of it would be bad for your health.”

Eating tons of anything would be bad for your health. Thanks, Carol. How articulate.

Let’s see. There’s about 18 slices of bacon in a pound (good article on evaluating bacon bits). Three slices per sandwich? Let’s round up slightly and say one pound lasts for the five sandwiches of a week.

Dr. Cooper suggests “tons” (plural). Let’s be kind and say two. That is 4,400 pounds of bacon. At a pound of week, it would take a little over 84.6 years to consume “tons” of bacon.

There is no mention of how long the observational period was for the study. Let’s presume two years. No, three years. That’s about 156 pounds of bacon resulting in a 59% increase in bladder cancer. Rinse. Repeat as necessary until cancer is diagnosed.

One hundred fifty-six pounds is a far cry from “tons.” So in a huge leap of scientific tomfoolery, let me say that three pounds of bacon will result in a 1% increase of bladder cancer. (I know, even I could rip apart such statements and my name isn't even Carol.) Three pounds equals 15 sandwiches equals 1% increase. My bladder is what helps me not to tinkle in the grocery store parking lot like those old people in the handicap parking spaces. No thank you.

BTW, if you reduce your food to the basics – sugar, vegetable oil, protein, and fiber – without the nice presentation normal food has, an average guy needs 440 pounds of food per year to maintain his caloric intake. Interestingly, Doc Coop seems to be suggesting that if you ate nothing but one food for ten years (to achieve “tons”) that it would be “bad for your health.” No, sh*t, lady.

Women who eat red meat daily are twice as likely to get breast cancer. Yeah, I know, probably ate tons of it.

So this guy gets his wife’s kidney as a transplant and then starts to cook and play with dogs – just like her. Says he’s turning into her. Sounds as if he likes to wear things that make him feel pretty, eh? I bet he always did. The lengths some people go to to express themselves. Amazing.

Better not start any long novels. It seems that mankind will run its course, and the last guy will die on October 31st, 2,252,006 AD. Damn. A few months shy of my 2,250,048th birthday. I was really counting on that birthday, too. It’s when I think I’ll finally be out of debt and can start saving for retirement. I wish scientists would leave well enough alone. Now my whole day is ruined. Thanks, guys. Thanks a lot.

I got to go. I’ve only got a little over two million years to get my act together.

Gag me twice

So Danny DeVito – the short and stout guy that played the angry cab company owner on that sitcom where Andy Kaufman played a simpleton (Taxi?) – was so drunk on some live television show the other day that he couldn’t stop himself from walking on stage and being interviewed. The show is called “The View” or something like that. That’s the place where the stage hands from the Lollapalooza Tour settled after everyone in the public agreed to not buy tickets.

Where do people like DeVito come from? I know Bumfoq, Arkansas, or someplace is his birthing station, but if Darwin was right then why aren’t these social deviants weeded out through natural selection? It’s ironic mentioning Darwin, because I just got a flash of DeVito acting like a bird of some kind – a penguin, I think – and doing it quite well.

I heard two references – one on Sports Center and the other on late-night talk radio – about Britney Spears hanging out with Paris Hilton and also not buying or wearing underwear. I don’t want to know what fabric, if any, absorbs or otherwise processes her expelled gases. Just isn’t necessary to know. And hanging with Paris? Our little girl has grown up! Remember when Teeny Bopper Britney became Prostitute Britney? Now the clearance-sale tag is on and she is apparently giving it away. I can hear the conversation: “Now, Brit-babe, see this thingey here? It moves the steering wheel up. This is important. I usually write it on my hand so I don’t forget. If you don’t move it up, you’ll be banging your head against it all night long. Believe you me, those bumps hurt!”

Speaking of conversations, I see Ellen DeGeneres is doing commercials again. “Now, Ell-ell, you can funny. Work on that. Quiet and smooth as she goes. No one needs to know that you are a dyke and – God forbid – no one needs to see you tongue bathing your girlfriends. Just be a good girl and puke back the script with a proper range of affect. Okey dokey?”

I can’t do this anymore. It is like shooting fish in a barrel. Bye.